events


​Workshop on The Gravitational Constant, from the Local to the Universal, St Andrews, UK, 20-21 April 2023. 

The workshop is part of The Gravitational Constant, from the Local to the Universal, an interdisciplinary collaborative project between St Andrews and the Lichtenberg Group for History and Philosophy of Physics, University of Bonn. The project brings perspectives from transnational history, philosophy, mathematics and physics to bear on the question of how the constant, G, was transformed from a controversial innovation in the 1880s to an unquestioned fundamental constant of nature by 1915. The aim of the workshop is to explore the wider context and foster collaborations around emerging research questions.  
​
The 2-day workshop will treat gravitation as a case study in a wider context of interpretational moves at the turn of the 19th to 20th century from the local to the universal that took place through:  
  • measurement   
  • circulation practices   
  • ideas about the role of laws   
  • translation  

Some pre- watching/reading to be required ahead of the workshop.

We have a limited number of spaces left. To attend (in person), please contact Isobel Falconer ([email protected]).

schedule

Thursday 20th
09:00
Vertical Divider
Registration (coffee available)
09:30-11:00
Vertical Divider
Session 1​
09:30 Welcome/Intro (G team)

09.45-10.00 Participant introductions
​​
10.00-11.00 Daniel Mitchell (IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ)
​Keynote: "Inventing the Physical Constant: Quantity Algebra and Field Theory in Maxwellian Metrology"
abstract
Physical constants are natural and theoretical entities. I go looking for their common roots in the quantification of physics during the late-nineteenth century, around the same time that we can discern the beginnings of the philosophy of measurement. This leads me to examine the co-development of physical meaning and mathematical structure within the rise of ‘absolute measurement,’ or what we might term the integration of measuring scales. Since electromagnetism and its telegraphic and industrial applications were key drivers of this rise, I focus specifically on the electric and magnetic constants, ε and μ. I explain their invention as an outcome of an unfulfilled Maxwellian dynamical reductionist program, with twin aspects: the construction of a field-theoretic metrological framework, along with an algebra for manipulating quantities (as opposed to numbers) directly. I conclude by considering how G was implicated in this Maxwellian program and make some suggestions about its invention, too.
11:00-11:30
Vertical Divider
Coffee
11:30-13:00
Vertical Divider
Session 2​
11.30-12.00 Jane Wess (independent)
Discussion: ​"Tensions in the production of knowledge through measurement: the Royal Geographical Society c.1875-1925"
abstract
​This discussion will centre around specific examples from the archives of the RGS, aiming to identify more general aspects of the practice of measurement. It argues that looking at the tensions that existed between various requirements, possibilities, and factions, can shed light on the negotiations which took place in order to produce what was generally accepted as knowledge.  These tensions affected the smooth production of knowledge, challenging concepts of how ‘scientific’ the process of establishing ‘facts’ actually was.   The first tension to be mentioned is that between taking actual measurements objectively, and a desire to correlate them with previous results. Related to this is the removal of outliers and general massaging, which also calls into question the ownership of the data. Another tension is between the ability to use precision instruments for some measurements but not others, leading to a mis-match in tolerances. Another is the desire to record physical phenomena but not having instruments that are entirely trusted, so having to test them simultaneously.  Another is between theory and instrumentation, such as when a complex instrument is available but the theory is not there to analyse the results. If a particular representation of the ‘truth’ is desired, then the outputs using different instruments will vary,; for example the compass and chain provides a map consisting of straight lines, whereas a plane table will give a pictorial 2-dimensional image. This means negotiations are required to decide on the best output, with resulting tensions arising between user groups.   
12.00-13.00 Richard Staley (Copenhagen, Cambridge)
​Keynote: "Gift, trade and gravity: Circulation practices and knowledge economies, across disciplinary space and time"
abstract
In 2004 Jim Secord developed a proposal to consider ‘knowledge in transit’ or communication practices as a means of providing a more comprehensive and analytically rigorous approach than microhistories and historiographical arguments about context, which often failed to conceptualise geographical and disciplinary boundaries. This paper builds on his suggestion and explores several strategic examples in order to develop a framework for understanding circulation practices, by focusing on the way historians and philosophers of science approach geographies and temporal traditions of knowledge. Bronislaw Malinowski’s anthropology of a ‘Tribal Economy’ and the Kula will serve as both a theoretical resource in its examination of exchange relations, and as an example of knowledge in circulation for the sense in which it exemplified a continuation of Ernst Mach’s vision of science as economical description. My two other primary examples will be drawn from the papers on the gravitational constant and related fields presented to the 1900 international congress by C.V. Boys, R. Bourgeois and Roland Eötvös, treating them as papers designed to set research in circulation; and from Mach and Einstein on acceleration and gravitation, which speak to the possibility of implicit and explicit forms of the circulation of knowledge in textbook pedagogy and research. To consider how best to understand circulations and knowledge economies, we will thereby link the sciences of gift, trade and gravity, working across experimental and theoretical dimensions of the gravitational constant and equivalence principle, and between the physical and social sciences.
13:00-14:00
Vertical Divider
Lunch
14:00-15:30
Vertical Divider
Session 3​
14.00-15.30 Arne Schirrmacher (Oxford, Berlin)
Presentation: "From an obvious material property to a fundamental function, from Hilfsgröße to h? On the circulation between places and disciplinary approaches in the case of radiation theory"
abstract
​When a former president of the German Physical Society recently approached me to confirm that Planck's constant is called h because it was introduced as a mere Hilfsgröße (auxiliary variable), I was appalled to find that this claim is ubiquitous, including in the English and German Wikipedia entries, albeit with rather dubious references that ultimately refer to hearsay. If true (which seems rather awkward since h came with k, later called Boltzmann's constant), it would conjure up an image of Planck as a kind of tinkering theorist, entirely at odds with that of a searcher for the ultimate system of natural units.  By embedding Planck's contribution in a much longer history of radiation theory and controversy over its foundations, from Kirchhoff, Wien, Planck, Pringsheim to Hilbert and Einstein, and thus across the different experimental, theoretical and mathematical physics cultures of Heidelberg, Berlin, Breslau and Göttingen, a multidimensional account of attitudes towards the fundamentality of the radiation formulae and their constants emerges. Thus, I argue that the case where a fairly evident innovation in physics becomes controversial and is only resolved over a long period of time into conceptions involving unique functional relations and fundamental constants applies not only to G, but also to h.  
14.30-15.30 Jenny Beckman (Uppsala)
Keynote: ​"Language and communication in Swedish science in the long 19th century"
abstract
In this paper, I will discuss language and scientific communication in the long 19th century, focusing on the publication practices of Swedish scientists. Translation and double publication were crucial tools of communication across language barriers, in addition to a gradual shift towards original publications in other European languages towards the end of the century. I will discuss three examples of such practices: The publication strategies of the chemist Jacob Berzelius ca 1800-1845; the efforts of Swedish physicists in the 1850s and 1860s to establish a standard for the solar spectrum; and the language negotiations in Swedish scientific journals in the late 19th century and the establishment of the Letterstedt prize for translation at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
15:30-16:00
Vertical Divider
Tea
16:00-17:00
Vertical Divider
Session 4​
16.00-17.00 Discussion led by G team (around suitable artefact(s) e.g. map of G-work, list of languages, publications, brief source on measurement – one idea could be the distribution network of Boys’ quartz fibres)
17:00
Vertical Divider
​Social event around the "Esperanto Wor(l)ds. Scotland, Postcards and the Making of an International Language" exhibition at the Wardlaw Museum 
19:00
Vertical Divider
Dinner in town for those that want
friday 21st
08:45
Vertical Divider
Coffee available
09:00-10:00
Vertical Divider
Session 5
09.00-09.30 Mahmoud Jalloh (Southern California)
Presentation: "Dynamical Symmetries and the Values of the Constants: A Historical Episode"
abstract
​Dynamical symmetries are transformations of systems that leave the laws and observable phenomena invariant. Such symmetries are important for evaluating counterfactuals (as in modeling) and for determining the semantic content of the laws. The question of whether these symmetries leave the value of the constants invariant is seldom raised. This is the question of the nomological status of the constants: Are their values necessary (constant necessitism) or contingent (constant contingentism)? In this talk I intend to raise a version of this question through the analysis of a historical debate concerning the role of the gravitational constant in dynamical symmetries. The historical episode concerns the validity of a symmetry principle proposed by Richard Tolman in 1914: the relativity of size. This principle claims that global scale transformations of length are dynamical (and empirical) symmetries. Of the many responses to Tolman’s principle I will focus my discussion on two: a 1915 article from Gunnar Nordström and a 1916 article from Tatiana Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa. While Nordström’s article is notable for first suggesting that the symmetry principle Tolman proposes requires the transformation of the value of the gravitational constant, Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa’s response is all the more important for suggesting that this is in tension with the nature of the laws. My simple aim is to make sense of the objection: How is it that constant contingentism leads to a trivialization of dynamical symmetries? Making sense of this objection requires an account of the role of the constants in physical law.  
09.30-10.00 Caspar Jacobs (Oxford)
Presentation: "Could G Have Had a Different Value?"
abstract
​In this paper I wish to explore whether it is physically possible for the gravitational constant, G, to have had a different value. In order to answer this question one must first determine what ‘G’ refers to, and what it means for G to have a certain value. It seems implausible, for instance, that G is literally a real number: one can at best represent G numerically. I propose that G represents inter-quantity structure (Jacobs 2022). In effect, a dimensional constant such as G allows one to ‘translate’ between values of quantities with different dimensions. Put differently, constants provide a map between distinct value spaces (the spaces in which dimensional quantities take their value). The map to which G corresponds is constrained by certain empirically detected features, such as the fact that it is linear in mass. The question whether it is physically possible for G to have had a different value then becomes the question whether the map between value spaces could have been different without a violation of the laws of nature. Contrary to Martens (2019), I will argue that the answer is positive. If one were to constrain G to have a unique value, this would amount to an ‘unnecessary global assumption’ (in the words of Earman and Norton (1989)), akin to the stipulation that the metric in special relativity rigidly designates the Minkowski metric. Such an assumption goes beyond the empirical evidence. If one can change the value of G, a threat of underdetermination looms: a world in which all particle masses and G were scaled is indiscernible from ours. This may seem to tell against the non-fixedness of G. But I show that such a threat is better evaded by a rejection of quidditism, the thesis (for my purposes) that mass-values have intrinsic identities. This leads to a final picture on which G provides part of the structure that individuates mass-values.  
​
10:00-10:10
Vertical Divider
Comfort break
10:10-11:10
Vertical Divider
Session 6
10.10-11.10 Bryan Roberts (London School of Economics)
​Keynote: "Is symmetry more fundamental than the laws of physics?
abstract
I point out a sense in which some local laws of physics can be derived from the symmetries of time, and argue that this supports an account due to Marc Lange according to which symmetries are more fundamental than some laws. However, not all symmetries (and not all laws) fit this picture; I argue that the symmetries and laws associated with the gravitational constant G are in this latter category.​
11:10-11:40
Vertical Divider
Coffee break
11:40-12:30
Vertical Divider
Session 7
Discussion led by G team
12:30-13:30
Vertical Divider
Lunch
13:30-15:00
Vertical Divider
Session 8
13.30-14.00 Kathryn Bruce (St Andrews)
Presentation: "Transnational knowledge networks and Fireblight: Canada and New Zealand"
abstract
​The crop disease, Fireblight, ravaged orchards in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As part of a wider project, tracing the knowledge creation and communication surrounding this disease by fruitgrowers, scientists, and governments, this paper will focus specifically on the shifting meanings of Fireblight and its impact when a transnational focus is applied. In the context of the British Empire Dominion of Canada, fruitgrowers in the period 1880-1920 were part of a long-established and wide-ranging network of knowledge creation and communication whereby experienced orchardists with demonstrable success in fruitgrowing were considered just as much a source of ‘expert’ knowledge as academic scientists. In contrast, fruitgrowers in New Zealand in the period 1920-1939 were operating in the context of an industry in its relative infancy. The foundations of fruitgrowing (as with many other primary industries) in this Dominion were laid by the heavy involvement of the government and agricultural scientists. Through an investigation of the conversations, debates, and disagreements concerning Fireblight, this paper will conclude that the differing existing knowledge network contexts, combined with the spread of the disease from North America to a new geographic region, fostered new meanings and priorities in the discussions concerning Fireblight in an imperial orchard setting.   
14.00-15.00 Michael Gordin (Princeton)
​Keynote: ​"Fin-de-siècle Scientific Standardization: Meters, Languages, Information"
abstract
During the period from 1870 to 1910, multiple standardization projects swept across Europe, from the Russian Empire to the Atlantic Coast, motivated in large part by a vision that the continent was becoming more interconnected economically, culturally, and intellectually. (The absence of a major war in Central or Western Europe in this period encouraged this optimistic worldview.) The growth of scientific and technological interconnection was seen as both a major inspiration for this push to standardization, and as a solution to how it could be accomplished. This presentation will focus on three superficially unrelated but in actuality deeply interconnected efforts: the re-standardization of the meter through the Meter Convention (1875); the efforts of the International Association of Academies to designate a constructed auxiliary language for scholarly communication, climaxing in the rupture between Esperanto and its schismatic Ido faction (1907); and Wilhelm Ostwald’s plan to rigorously systematize information exchange through his “Die Brücke” organization (1911).
15:00-15:30
Vertical Divider
Tea
15:30-16:30
Vertical Divider